Category: Geology

One month ago, I defended my PhD thesis and passed my viva exam, proving that basically anyone can become a Doctor these days. I got ‘minor revisions’ as a result, which was just to shorten the abstract to institutional format requirements, and cut the waffle from the Introduction. I kinda liked the waffle though, as […]

Mass extinctions are insanely catastrophic, but important, events that punctuate the history of life on Earth. The Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary, around 145 million years ago, was originally thought of to represent a mass extinction, but has subsequently been ‘down-graded’ to a minor extinction event based on new discoveries. However, compared to other important stratigraphic boundaries, like […]

This was originally posted at: http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/earthbound/plotting_for_the_earth_sciences So a cool paper came out a while back about using plots when attempting to construct stories as a mode of communicating in Earth Science. I cannot, as always, emphasise my frustration when someone writes an article that’s supposed to be broadly educational, and sticks it behind a paywall. In […]

This was initially posted at: http://blogs.egu.eu/palaeoblog/?p=600 Conserving our world’s biodiversity is currently one of the biggest challenges we face. I wrote a post recently about some of the issues palaeontologists face when trying to make our science relative to current conservation management and biodiversity issues (and have written elsewhere about this too). This is very much […]

This was originally posted at: http://blogs.egu.eu/palaeoblog/?p=549 Welcome to Day 3 of the EGU Annual Meeting. Do check the Geology for Global Development page too for some cracking updates on the sessions, particularly on the more ‘applied’ side of the geosciences, by Rosalie Testovin. This post is a quick break-down of some cool science from the morning […]

This was originally posted at: http://blogs.egu.eu/palaeoblog/?p=542 Day 2 in the Big Brother house (aka the European Geosciences Union General Meeting). There’s no where near enough beer, and tensions are getting high. A horde of angry horses have invaded the lower levels, and taken the President of Austria hostage, with demands of lowering the Fair Straw Tax. […]

This was originally posted at: http://blogs.egu.eu/palaeoblog/?p=529 NASA might be having a rain-check on its outreach activities, but that’s not why Curiosity has gone silent the last few days. Every once in a while an event known as the Mars Solar Conjunction places Mars’ orbit directly behind the sun with respect to Earth, and makes communications impossible. […]

Colima, Mexico. The goal: unearthing the secrets of Vulcán de Fuego or the “Volcano of Fire”. Fuego erupts roughly every two hours. Nothing major, just an outburst of billowing steam clouds from the summit, generally lasting no more than 10 minutes. These outbursts release pressure in the magma chamber below, and by letting off steam; […]

Throughout this series, I have highlighted the pitfalls and issues associated with effective communication of scientific knowledge to and with the public. This has largely been fueled by a recent paper highlighting these points as stepping stones and hurdles which scientists face and can develop upon to create strategies for becoming better at public communication. However, I’ve […]

This is now the fifth part in a series exploring the public communication of geoscience, this time focusing on the role that television can play as a communication medium. It is based on, and a development of the ideas conveyed within a paper by Iain Stewart, no stranger to TV himself, and Ted Nield, a […]